From: Dumaiu <Dymaio@...>
Date: 2007-12-11T10:24:58+09:00
Subject: Re: How much would variable declarations in Ruby make you wince?

On Dec 10, 11:38 am, "Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality"
<ihates...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "MonkeeSage" <MonkeeS...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:989bc966-6305-4149-a2b2-755558932688@o6g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On Dec 8, 6:51 pm, "Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality"
> > <ihates...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>     The two most popular sources of bugs for me when programming in Ruby
> >> are:
>
> >> 1)  Passing the wrong object as a parameter to a method.
> >> 2)  Accidentally creating a new variable.
>
> > 1.) How does predeclaration help?
>
> > var l = [1,2,3]
> > var h = {:a=>"b"}
> > wants_an_array(h) # => error
>
>     It wouldn't help at all and no one claimed that it would.  Did you read
> my post?
>
> > 2.) While that may alleviate the typo problem, it introduces another
> > class of bugs which are just as subtle:
>
> > var list = create_useful_list
> > if should_modify_list(list)
> >    # I meant to modify the variable "list" here...
> >    var list = modify_list(list)
> > end
> > use_list(list)
>
> > Once one became accustomed to typing "var", there is every chance that
> > it would be used places where a pre-existing variable was meant, but
> > the "var" just got typed out of habit.
>
>     You don't really believe this, do you?  Do you program in C/C++ at all?
> Do you find yourself accidentally typing "int" when using a variable or
> function in that language?
>     Just because you need this keyword for declaring variables doesn't mean
> you're going to get so used to typing it that you'll accidentally type it
> out all the time.  That's just silly...

     I don't really think it's equitable to liken Perl, where all you
do is use 'my', 'my', 'my', to C++, where the typing forces you to
really think about what you're instantiating.  There is more room for
error in Perl.